


Civil Liberties

by faithinthepoor



Series: SVU [3]
Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-16
Updated: 2013-01-16
Packaged: 2017-11-25 17:55:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/641467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faithinthepoor/pseuds/faithinthepoor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alex's POV. Cover the events of  Baby Killer, Non-Compliance, Asunder and Taken. Written by faithinthepoor</p>
            </blockquote>





	Civil Liberties

**Author's Note:**

> Follows the events of [Reasonable Doubts](http://archiveofourown.org/works/640097) and [Patria Potestas](http://archiveofourown.org/works/641463)

There used to be moments when she had doubts about her calling, but they were brief, they were flickers, glimmers, concentrated pin points of dubiousness that fluttered through her mind with the speed of hummingbird wings. Nowadays the doubt comes more frequently and lasts longer; there are entire days when doubt trumps any certainty or assuredness that she might experience. She used to view doubt as a liability, something that would stop her from being all that she could be but now she’s not so sure, she is starting to believe that she needs doubt, that her soul is eroding without it. She knows that people thought that she was cold for wanting to use parental responsibility issues to charge the Barrera’s, it’s not like she needed to be psychic or to be testing the barometer of public opinion, not when Stabler could barely keep his contempt contained. It was a high profile situation and there was blood in the water, the sharks were circling, fast, vicious and in need of being fed. The parents were an acceptable liability, necessary collateral damage. There are potential advantages to the attention that one might gain from such a controversial move but a true-believer wouldn’t have taken this route, a true believer would have charged the child. Charlie Philips certainly would have charged the child; he made it clear that it’s what he thought she should have done, as though her actions suggested that she was soft. She is as political as they come and to that end she can hide behind the almost non-existent convictions rate for murderers of this age but that’s not why she doesn’t want to charge Elias, she will rise to power but she doesn’t want it to be at the expense of a seven year old boy.

She doesn’t sleep well after she charges the child and has some particularly brutal fantasies about the ways in which she would like Charlie Philips to die. The SVU squad wear their disproval for her actions like a badge of honour and she resents them for that, she shouldn’t have to justify herself to them, she hates herself for charging him, she doesn’t need them to compound her guilt. It’s impossible to defend her actions when she doesn’t even believe in them herself and they are forcing her to come across as heartless or, at best, a mindless follower and she wouldn’t normally care but doesn’t ever want Olivia to see her as those things. 

When she learns that Elias is really just a terrified little boy who witnessed something that no child should ever see, there is an exponential rise in her guilt. She played a major part in putting this boy through an interrogation, in arresting him and in dragging him through court and she successfully petitioned to have him removed from his family. Added to this there are the indirect results of her actions, the media scrutiny, the public trial and the death threats that she’s sure his family must have received. It wasn’t exactly easy to proceed before she knew had witnessed a slaying, she stood in that courtroom and had to force herself to remember the crime scene photos that showed the broken body of a little girl, she could feel the eyes of that girl’s family tunnelling into her back and that helped to steel her resolve but it didn’t protect her from the similar lasers that Elias’ parents shot at her as their little boy was taken from them. She needs to function, she’s no good to him or to anyone else if she becomes paralysed by guilt and indecision so she tells herself that it’s not all her fault, that it takes a village to raise a child and it was the village that failed this child so spectacularly. The problems came long before she entered his life – minimum wage, a flawed health care system, substandard living conditions, inadequate child care – she didn’t cause any of that but she is part of the diseased system that did. She can’t change these problems, at least not yet, but she might be able to save this one child. It shouldn’t be a difficult decision but it most certainly is, if she falls on her sword for this one boy she risks everything, risks all the good that she could potentially do in the future and one damaged little life shouldn’t be worth that. She should be able to place the good of society ahead of this one child but he is here and he is real and she doesn’t know if she is capable of taking what little innocence he has left. At the end of the day it’s her career or a child’s future, at least the magnitude of the situation helps her to put the dilemma over her feelings for Olivia into perspective.

There is often a gaping chasm between the party line and what she knows is right, she used to be able to cross it without a backwards glance but she doesn’t know if can this time. She wishes she could be sure that her hesitation was based on her own scepticism or at least that it’s Elias’ age and tragic tale that’s clouding her judgement but she fears that she is more effected than she should be by what the detectives want, by what one detective in particular wants. When Oliva tells her that Elias needs to talk, she feels that Olivia is asking her to fix this, to make all right for him, for her, for all of them and she really does try.

Useless isn’t a word that she commonly associates with herself but it’s never been more apt than it is now, she let a traumatised little boy do a walk by, forcing him to face a monster, she holds the pictures that Elias drew that show him burning in the flames of hell in her hands and she still can not convince her superiors to let her drop the case. Charlie’s cruelty is staggering, he builds her up and throws her to the press, guaranteeing that she has to conform or be slaughtered like a chicken in a Santeria ceremony, she is sure that he is gloating as she plays the dutiful puppet, parroting the words he would want her to use. She feels a large piece of her honour slip away and she has an epiphany – this is a huge lose-lose situation - there can be no future good deeds if she has no career but the same can be said if she keeps her career at the expense of her soul. 

What she is doing is absolutely the right thing to do but that doesn’t mean that she doesn’t have second thoughts or that she isn’t petrified of what will happen to her as she withdraws the charges based on a lack of mens rea. People will want to crucify her for this, as though ruining a second child’s life will somehow make up for the loss of the first. As she watches a mother plead with the public to let go, to go home and look after their children, she marvels at the windfall that has been bestowed upon her, this is an ally that she neither expected or deserved. This woman is the one person who has the right to be angry with her and yet she accepts the situation for what it is, she is braver and more forgiving that anyone should be, she seems to understand that blood begets blood and that sending Elias to prison is not going to resurrect her daughter.

The words of the dead girl’s mother are powerful but they aren’t going to silence all dissent, she can accept that, she is just pleased that her actions don’t seem to have resulted in full scale riot. The DA’s office are lionising her and are suddenly in complete support of her decision, Charlie Phillips back-flipped like he was a member of Circ du Soliel and is now claiming responsibility for orchestrating the dismissal of charges. As she walks into the squad room and Munch calls her Teflon she feels accepted and supported and that is possibly the most dangerous thing that could happen to her, she is not a police officer, her job is going to have her at loggerheads with these people, she can’t afford to want to be one of them. She is busy giving herself a lecture on the importance of distancing herself from this group when a female voice congratulates her and a hand touches her arm, suddenly she is not capable of thinking about anything except that she wants to be part Olivia’s world. Her brain has clearly gone off on some sort of a sabbatical because she is babbling about having Sunday off, she has no idea what she expects Olivia to do with that information, she just desperately needs her to know it. Her emotions betray her in a worrying public display as she looks to Olivia when Elliot asks her to join them for a drink, she breaks the gaze, not because she is concerned about what other people will think of her reaction but because the moment seems too real, she is sure that there is affection in Olivia’s eyes and it feels so good that it is painful.

For the rest of her life she will wonder what would have happened if sobering events hadn’t have intervened and they had made it to McMullen’s that night, she can’t help thinking about what it would have been like to have the convenient excuse of alcohol induced behaviour to allow her to be loose and to casually touch Olivia, to allow her to be free. She’s been thinking a lot about freedom lately and it’s made her realise that it was for the best that she wasn’t intoxicated in Olivia’s presence because freedom is incredibly overrated. Nikos Kazantzakis was right, you need to be mad to seek freedom and she has no idea why one would want either of those things. Mark Nash and his mother cling to the illusion of freedom with frightening devotion and yet he is one of the most tortured individuals that she has ever met. She watched him in the interrogation room, rocking and screaming, covered in blood, and to her it didn’t seem like the kind of existence that anyone would ever want to choose for themselves. 

These are vicious crimes and she wants him convicted, she wants the case to be waterproof and airtight, she wants that gun. As she slaps the warrant onto Elliot’s chest she hopes that Olivia is watching and that she notices that she does have a playful side, she just wishes that Olivia could understand the irony of why she can act this way with Elliot and not with her. These little moments help to distract her from the horrifying reality of what Mark has done but they don’t stop her wondering if these atrocities could have been avoided if only he had been in his right mind and so she includes compliance as part of the deal that she offers his lawyer. In his psychiatric assessment Mark lists the side effects of antipsychotic medications as though they are poison, all the while talking about the cyanide that he already believes is in his head and his distress over the people reading the books in his brain and while she can appreciate that the medications have a downside she doesn’t understand why his mother would support him living in such a tormented state. He admits that he prefers his world to reality but she can see no evidence that he actually enjoys the world that his mind has created, he is an intelligent and educated man, he could be so much more than this.

No matter what her views on the matter are, she can’t make him take his medication and she can’t turn him into a credible witness, a fact that Benson and Stabler seem to ignore as they invade her office and stare at her as though she is directly responsible for the law that ties all of their hands. She can’t really explain why learning that he is innocent changes things, she wants to convict the real perpetrator but that doesn’t change Nash’s basic rights or the fact that while she doesn’t understand his decisions, she respects them and yet she goes ahead and violates all of that in order to meet her own needs and, she supposes, those of a dead girl and those of society but she doesn’t feel good about it. His consent is obtained by coercion and while it’s not illegal, it’s not really moral and it sits like a stone in her heart, she is starting to worry that she has more morals and ethics than she thought and that it’s possible that she can’t do this job. Perhaps it would be easier if she really was the scum sucking bitch that the detritus of a rapist accused her of being, maybe then she wouldn’t feel so dirty all the time.

She doesn’t sleep at all after he kills himself, when she closes her eyes she sees his face and hears his mother’s voice. Mark Nash died because of what she took from him and she is not sure how she is meant to live with that. Sometimes she can turn her compassion on and off for the sake of a trial and she wishes that she could find a way to turn if off permanently because it’s killing her. There has probably been blood on her hands for a very long time, she has made deals and mistakes that have resulted in people getting hurt and she used to be able to accept that, she hates what she’s becoming, that she seems to want to be a better person, things were so much easier when she didn’t care so much.

The Andrews case exemplifies everything that is wrong with the law and with her life. She wanted to believe Patricia Andrews, with every case she wants to atone for Mark’s death and yet this woman and her husband were using the law for their sick and twisted little games. In a way she is grateful because it did give her the opportunity to out manoeuvre IAB. They stood there in their cheap suits threatening her and talking down to her in the same breath and she was able to use that to her advantage, forcing them into a position where they could no longer hide behind being in a supervisory role. For a second she felt alive, like she was good at what she did and she had something to offer and then Cragen tore all that to pieces by implying that she was sanctioning rape inside of marriage by not charging Lloyd Andrews. She had thought that Cragen could be someone that she might grow to respect, maybe even like but he tells her that something is her call and then criticises the call that she makes, as though her decisions are only acceptable so long as they concur with his. He may wear a different mask but it is disguising a very similar creature to that of her superiors and at the moment she feels that she is little more than a ping-pong ball that each side swats back and forth. Munch is probably right about her getting into pissing contests, when she walks into the courtroom full of cops she certainly wants to ask them to whip it out so that they can take measurements and she’s fairly sure she’d win but that’s just bravado fostered by how powerless she has been made to feel of late. It does drive her though, when her opposing council offers her a cloth to wipe the egg from her face, she vows to make him into a puddle and proceeds to do so, arguing points like an artist but it’s not enough to win the case. She is shattered by the verdict, so much so that she can’t even muster enough enthusiasm to point out convincingly that she has achieved something. She did get spousal rape past the Grand Jury and that is an advancement, she just wishes that it felt like one.

The Andrews kiss to celebrate their apparent victory and she feels a wave of revulsion wash over her body. She lied when she said that the fact that they never should have been married was not her concern because it actually concerns her greatly – he probably did rape her and yet people still think they “belong” together, they cheat and fight and lie and yet they can be married. Their farce of a relationship is considered sacred and yet she can never be with Olivia because it would technically be a criminal act that would end both their careers, it doesn’t seem right and it doesn’t seem fair. When Munch observes that some women still want to be chattel, she informs him that it is their choice and while her tone is suitably condescending she can’t help but think that she could do worse than to belong to Olivia and in the wake of her defeat she is dangerously close to doing something about that.

Her faith in her judgement is becoming increasingly slim. She thought Siobhan Miller was a victim, she is starting to think that she’s not even sure she that knows what that is anymore, that she can no longer distinguish innocence from evil or that maybe those things aren’t mutually exclusive. She doesn’t know how to trust her eyes, how to trust her feelings about anything, be it personal or professional. Russel Ramsay had seemed like a dirtbag and she was going to burry him, she spoke to him like he was guilty because she was convinced that he was and the only innocent person involved in the entire mess died with her condemning him for crimes that he never committed. Arresting Siobhan for his death may mean that someone is legally accountable but it doesn’t make a dent in her sense of responsibility, she put him in prison, she can add his blood to Nash’s, to Elias’.

Olivia has been around a lot lately and she’s not sure what to think about that. The detective was in her office discussing details of the case in a black dress that must have been the outfit for her mother’s funeral and Alex really wanted to be there for her but didn’t know how, she wasn’t even sure if she could raise the issue of her mother’s death, whether that would cross a line that Olivia wasn’t willing to allow her past. She tries not to read too much into things, tries not to think that it means anything that Olivia was in her office on the day of her mother’s funeral, Olivia may have simply been avoiding the squad room for fear that it would be full of pitying glances but in her mind she isn’t able to downplay that moment, in her mind it means everything. Lately everything to do with Olivia means more than it should, even the fact that they were sitting next to one another when they were making the deal with Siobhan felt like some sort of symbolised commitment to one another. 

After Siobhan has been arrested she finds herself standing next to Olivia and her mouth acts before her brain has time to think, “I know it’s not really a time to celebrate but you guys still owe me that drink that you offered, do you feel like drowning some sorrows with me?” Olivia seems to hesitate and it gives her mind the opportunity to catch up and to realise that she can’t do this now, that Olivia needs a friend, not someone who in all likelihood would ruin both of their lives but getting drunk and kissing her. “It’s okay, it’s bad timing but maybe we could take a rain check?” She turns and walks away before Olivia has a chance to answer, it’s not the most mature behaviour that she has ever exhibited but it’s the best she can do right now. She wants to live in the world were she’s brave enough to kiss Olivia, or to tell her how she feels and invite her back to her place but that world will never be a reality, it can only ever exist in her imagination. She’s not really all that different to Mark Nash and she doubts that life will treat her any better than it did him.


End file.
